Real Estate Trends – Acton, Massachusetts #3

Introduction:

Welcome back again for our latest real estate market trend report. For those of you that are here for the first time what we do in these reports is examine the real estate market in a city or town in Massachusetts or New Hampshire to evaluate the current conditions. We do this by looking at the changes in three key metrics year over year for the municipality to see how the market has changed and then evaluate what those observations might mean for that market moving forward.

We have looked at Acton a couple times in the past but not since May of 2015 so it has been awhile!

Market Trends in Acton, MA – July 2015 and 2016:

The Acton, MA market has fallen off some since last year. The average prices were down somewhat and the median prices were down more so. The days on market were up some a little bit as well. Inventory was pretty stable with 35 sales in July of 2015 up to 37 in July 2016.

Average Listing Prices:

We will first start off by looking at the average listing price. In Acton, MA the average listing price in July 2015 was $668,921. This was down to $664,632 in July 2016. This gives a trivial decrease of 0.64% year over year.

Looking at the median prices we see that it was lower in both years. For July of 2015 the median listing price for Acton, MA was $665,655 and in July 2016 it was $600,000 which now gives a much larger decrease of 9.86%.

Average Sale Prices:

The next thing we will be looking at is the average sale prices. The average sale price for in Acton, MA in July of 2015 was $671,804 and in July 2016 that was down to $658,238. That gives another small decrease of 2.02%, though a bit higher than the average list price.

We see a different pattern as we did for the median list price. In this case it was still lower in 2016 but now is higher in 2015. For July of 2015 the median sales price for Acton, MA was $678,000 and in July 2016 it was $605,000 giving another much smaller decrease of 10.77%.

Prices are down for Acton, MA this month. The range for all four metrics was pretty large going from about 0.5-11%. The averages were much lower than the medians at only about 0.5-2%. The medians were much higher at about 10-11%. Medians are the preferred real estate pricing analysis method so it is reasonable to go with that higher range. That range is not that big but since sales are far more important than just listing prices the largest overall decrease was seen in the median sale price therefore the best guess is that prices are down right at the top of the range at just under 11%.

Average Days on Market:

Finally the last metric we look at are the average days on market, which is the measure of how long it takes for a property to sell in the current market. For Acton, MA the average days on market in July of 2015 were 41.11 and the average days on market for July 2016 were 46.41 giving a modest 12.89% increase.

Acton, Massachusetts Summary:

The Acton, Massachusetts real estate market is down some since last year. The average prices were down a very small amount however the median prices were down a much larger amount. The days on market were up a little bit as well, further supporting some decline in the market.

In summary if you are looking to sell a house in Acton, MA now you should expect to get less for it than you would have gotten last year. You can also expect it to take a little more time to sell compared to last year as well.